Contemplations
by what-happened-2-nice
Summary: One-shot. A moment of introspection and coming down to facts. Post PP.


Disclaimer: I do not own Danny Phantom or NASA. The story is mine.

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She finally finds him, lying on the rooftop looking up at the stars. She comes out and stands a short distance away, studying his expression… Not relaxed and mildly happy like he usually wears when sky watching. Not frowning. Just tight and… pensive? troubled? Definitely intense, off in his own little world. She lies down beside him and leans back into his chest to look up at the stars as well. Silence.

"What's wrong?" Silence. "Danny?"

"Nothing's wrong. I'm… just thinking."

"I'd make a joke about not hurting your head, but … even the air around you feels heavy. This is not nothing. You're angry about something? Have a bad day?"

Sigh. "No."

Mocking sigh. "Elaborate, ghost boy."

"Ghost-young-adult, thank you very much. Or even ghost guy. I'll admit I can't carry off 'ghost man' until I can grow a decent beard, but I am _not_ a ghost _boy_ anymore." He shifts a bit beneath her, moving them to a more comfortable position.

"Hmm, nope. Just doesn't roll off the tongue like ghost boy. If it makes you feel better, you can think of it as my pet-name for you. After all, I let you get away with 'Sammy.' And that wasn't an answer to my question. I still want to know what's wrong."

"Ugh and ugh. It can't be a pet-name if my enemies use it too. Just… ugh. Can you imagine Skulker using it as a term of endearment?"

"He kinda does, if you think about it. And I'm still waiting." He shivers in revulsion beneath her and she looks up to catch a look of utter disgust on his face.

"I think I _am_ going to answer your question now, if only to move away from this way too gross line of conversation."

"About time."

Silence. She starts to comment in exasperation, when he covers her lips with his finger.

"I'm not angry. My day was not any worse or any better than usual. No new ghosts, no hard to beat old ones. I'm actually done with my homework and I understood most of it."

"So?"

"I was just… just wondering."

"Danny, if you're going to make me drag this out of you a sentence at a time, let me know now, so I can go get a blanket. It's chilly up here."

He smiles that sheepish half-smile that she loves so much and pulls her closer for warmth before his expression sobers again.

"I was thinking today and I just started to wonder if I should resent this." He waves vaguely at his chest with his free hand.

She sits up slowly and turns herself towards him, frowning a bit and biting her lip. She will never free herself of this very personal, unspoken guilt. She has, ghost granted wishes and altered memories included, killed her best friend and love twice over. "Your ghost powers?"

"Wha? No, no. Even on my worst days, the powers are too much of a gift to ever really regret. Being able to fly…" He runs out of words, but the light in his eyes says what he can't. "Heck, I even made it into space once. Even if I was too busy fighting Technus and Val to really enjoy the view. And I didn't even need NASA to do it." He thinks for a moment, then adds, "Or a bankrupt Russian Space Program and millions of dollars, I guess."

She smiles a bit at his joke and relaxes, waiting for him to continue.

"Something just occurred to me earlier tonight. I'm not used to having enough free time to just _think_ and I… I remembered something Jazz told me a while back. When Vlad tricked Mom into coming with me out to his chalet in Colorado, he also sent some of his mutant ghost animals to attack and hopefully kill Dad, here in Amity."

"I remember you telling me about that."

"Yeah. She told me that after the first ghosts attacked, she tried on one of Mom's jumpsuits, in order to 'hate ghost hunting in a more informed context' or something like that. She didn't have a jumpsuit of her own." He finally frowns at this revelation and then goes on when all she can do is look at him, confused. "There are those orange monstrosities in the Ops Center that come in just about every size. Mom and Dad both have dozens of the darned things, since they wear them all the time. She specifically went up to Mom's closet to try on one of _Mom's_ jumpsuits. There wasn't a suit that was just _hers_."

He stands up and squares himself in front of her. Then he triggers his ghost side. As the rings pass the tips of his hair and toes, he actually looks a bit angry.

"Not like there was for me," he says as he tugs on the neckline of his hazmat jumpsuit.

"I went and looked. No suit in any of the closets or cabinets. No suit in any of the boxes in the attic that the Box Ghost has managed to miss. No suit in the lab where I got my suit the day I went into the portal. Not even any _bits_ of suit in the shed with the rest of the junk. So I asked Dad. He pulled out one of those orange tents and told me he'd made it for her, but when I looked, it had been worn. He'd obviously just altered one of his own suits with an embroidered 'Jazz' during one of his crazy needlework sprees. I mean, even if she had inherited the Fenton fudge gene and the bulk that comes with it she wouldn't ever be as tall as Dad." He sighs, changes into Fenton again, and sits back down on the rooftop next to her.

He looks down at his hands before continuing, "They just assumed. They took it for granted that Jazz would be off doing her brain surgery, or psychology, or whatever it might be that suited her genius. But they also assumed I would be here, taking up the family business. And I'm up here on the roof wondering if I should resent this."

She moves close to him again. Embracing him she hooks her chin over his shoulder and closes her eyes, feeling the vibrations of his voice through her hold on his chest. "I mean, I've been just as obvious with my dreams of space as Jazz has been with hers. I've been collecting rockets and NASA posters and everything else space related as long as I remember. Whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always, always answered 'Astronaut'. Yeah, I pretty much put that aside after the whole ghost thing made my grades tank and I realized any physical they'd put me through would probably come back… abnormal. But Mom and Dad didn't even know about my ghost powers until just a little while ago. It's just 'Jazz goes and Danny stays,' and nobody asks my opinion about it."

They sit in silence for a while as she rubs his tense back and thinks about what he's said.

"Have you talked to Jazz about this?"

"No. It only just came together for me tonight. And she's finally settled into college. And she's a _part_ of it, so… And, really, I'm not sure if it's something I _should_ be upset about."

"Daniel Fenton! You are allowed to think of yourself and your own needs. You carry this hero complex way too far sometimes."

He rolls his eyes and then counts his blessings that she can't see his face right now. "That's not what I meant. I just… I don't… Should I…? Ugh. I'm thinking myself into a stomach ache."

Leaning back into the roof again, he pulls her arms back around to the front and lies flat. His eyes are looking past her at the stars once more, but she can tell that he's not really seeing them. She moves up a bit and straddles his stomach so that she can look down into his face.

"I don't know if I'm the best one to talk to about this, considering my relationship with my parents, but let's give it a try anyway. We'll start with the negatives because I'm Goth and any good Goth confronts the dark before heading into the schmoopy- fluffy- cotton candy- rainbow sparkly- 'attitude of gratitude' nightmare that the 'norms' call 'good.'" He smirks at her tirade and gestures grandly for her to continue.

"Fine," she huffs, "Your parents, or maybe just your dad, but your mom didn't correct him, ignored your feelings. They made a decision for you that you would inherit the family business, while Jazz went on to greater things." He looks away with an unhappy expression, nodding, but she gently pulls his face back towards her and plays with his hair as she continues. "You're hurt that they didn't give you a choice. You are probably feeling like they don't think you're as smart as your sister. You're upset that they've dismissed or… what's the word? Marginalized? … what you see as a dream career in a job that involves the one thing you've loved more than anything else, traveling to the stars. And they did all this to drag you into the freaky and completely bogus world of paranormal science and ghost hunting."

He nods along with each point until she reaches the last one. When he finally catches on to what she's saying, he pauses in mid-nod and looks up at her. "Wait, no. Ghosts are real. Hello? You and me and Tucker fight them every day and _I_ do it with_ ghost powers._ Didn't we cover the whole ghost boy thing already? The paranormal is completely real."

"It's 'you, Tucker, and I.' I thought you were doing better in English class," she corrects, pinching his nose. "And yes, it has been proven beyond all doubt that ghosts are real and paranormal science is legitimate. Unless you're those idiots that showed up when Vlad put that bounty on your head." He snorts in agreement. "But you didn't always believe in it, did you?"

He stops and gets that tense look again, not angry or upset, just deeply thoughtful.

"While you have spent most of your life with your eyes on the stars, you've also spent it trying to pretend you are absolutely normal." He makes a face at her and starts to defend himself, but she takes her turn to silence him with a slender finger across his lips. "I'm not knocking you, I'm just saying. You know I think that different is good. Now listen. Even before the airheaded A-List and the rest of our classmates decided that ghosts weren't spooky fun anymore, but something to make fun of you for, there were always other reasons to pull away from the whole ghost thing. There were the adults who watched your family out of the corners of their eyes because until recently it was easy to deny that ghosts were real, even in the most haunted town in America. There were the zealots who used their religion to persecute you because your family was involved in 'the devil's work.' There were the people who were perfectly justified in being angry when your parents destroyed something in their, um, enthusiasm. There is anyone who has ever had to share the road with your dad." They snicker together. "There's even poor, crazy Mr. Crowley who shouts obscenities at you because ghosts don't fit in with his visions of the end of the world."

"Heh, yeah. I still don't go through that part of town unless I'm on patrol and can fly away really, really fast."

"Well, maybe he'll come around now that you've saved the world."

"Or maybe he'll just hate me more because I've made it harder for him to convince people of _his_ apocalyptic message of doom or something."

"Point. But back to your problem. You've spent an awfully long time acting like being a Fenton didn't mean you weren't normal. When you couldn't do that you would try to just fade into the background. You call yourself a C-student, …"

"Ghost hunting didn't leave me time to study."

"I've seen your mom's scrapbook, Danny. I know you were getting A's and B's until the accident. And the B's were only in the subjects you really didn't care about. You're just as smart as Jazz. It's just that you can be kinda clueless… and lazy." He frowns at her again. "Grades aside, you never spoke up in class, you never acted out, you dress all-American, you worshiped the A-List and tried to join them, even when they were so nasty to you, and you lusted after Paulina, just like all the other boys at school."

"Umm, I plead hormones on that last one. I'm not really into her, I swear."

"Whatever. You were following the crowd, going after everything that the rest of the world said you should want, and do, and try to be. And when you couldn't do that you did your best to prove that you didn't need to be a ghost to be invisible. And although you might not have put it into words, I think it was all to get away from the ghost-craziness of your parents."

He nods thoughtfully.

"Now listen close, because I'm going to turn this all around. You have some built up issues from years of dealing with everyone's prejudices. You've always felt you were living in Jazz's shadow a bit. You were dealing with the normal embarrassment every kid feels when dealing with their parents. Plus just a smidge more embarrassment because your parents are so… eccentric." She moves to lie beside him, wrapping her arm across his chest. "You're just going to have to deal with that last one, since eccentricity is one of the privileges of being a genius. Maybe you can look at it as endearing instead of embarrassing. I don't know." She shrugs, then continues.

"You've got all this baggage that you are brining into your 'discovery' that Jazz doesn't have a jumpsuit. And you're confused because you never thought about what you were doing, and didn't realize you_ had_ baggage. So on to the fluffy- goodness part. I'm gonna focus on Jack, since I think he's more at the root of this whole thing. You know how much your dad loves you, right? And how proud he is of you? And how honored he would be if he knew how often you defended him and his image against that traitorous, lying, thieving, two-faced, tenth- commandment violating fruit loop, Vlad, even when Vlad was pounding the snot out of you? And how very happy he is that you _are_ following his footsteps and doing the whole ghost hunting thing?"

"Geez, Sam, take a breath."

"I know that Jazz is Daddy's girl and you're completely a momma's boy…

"Hey!"

"Shush. Sam has the floor now and she's on a roll."

"It's disturbing when Sam talks about herself in the third person."

She reaches up and places her hand over his mouth. "But I've been told that boys are very special to their fathers. You are his son, his heir. And we both know that you're more like him than you want to be."

"I admit nothing," he mumbles through her hand.

"Exactly. You have his heart and enthusiasm. You have his courage. You have his brains, and you're just as bad at using them."

"If this is going to be an 'insult-Danny-fest', I'm going to phase through the roof and leave you up here all cold and alone."

"You know what I mean. He's just as much of a genius as your mom, but if it isn't ghostly, he isn't interested. In his eyes you are still Danny, yes, but you're also a continuation of everything _he_ is and everything he has done. You are loved by your parents, unconditionally. They love you for who you are. They love you and are proud of you for what you've done. They love what you represent, both to them and now the world. So let's break this down point by point, without the issues that have been making this so confusing. Baggage isn't meant to be carried everywhere. You need to put it down when you're done with it. One. You are smart, just like the rest of the family. You just don't use those smarts very much. We can work on this, but on to point Two. Ghosts are real and your parents are acknowledged as pioneers in a field that they've pretty much defined all on their own. They ARE the authorities. Three. Now we don't know _what _your parents were thinking unless you ask them."

"I'm not gonna ask them anything. They've got enough to deal with right now. The whole half-ghost thing, Vlad, all of the media attention, and on and on and on."

"_But…_ we can look at this while taking everything I've said so far into account. You are wondering if you should feel resentful that they've assumed something, but you can't know that they've ignored what you wanted until you talk to them."

"Whaaat?"

"I'm saying _you_ made the assumption that they expected you to take up the family business, but you don't know it for sure. Have they ever told you that they were giving you Fenton Works? That you had to carry on their legacy?"

"Umm, no, but they always go on and on about their ghost stuff and…"

"And maybe they were being enthusiastic about something they loved and wanted to share it with someone they cared about."

"Maybe."

"So we put aside the idea that you are less than Jazz somehow. We put aside the idea that a profession in ghost hunting is crazy. We put aside the _assumption_ that they are demanding you go into that profession… unless you're ready to talk to them about it?"

"No."

"Tsk. Stubborn. So, point Four… Your. Parents. Love. You. Do you really think that they'd force you to do anything that you were really against? That they wouldn't support your dreams above their own? I mean, they're your parents, not mine. I've never seen them try to make you be anything other than yourself. I've never seen them upset with you except when they thought you weren't living up to your potential. Now that they know what was really going on, they are absolutely over the moon. Because you are really good at the whole ghost hunting thing they love, but also because you were exploring potential they never even imagined."

Silence.

"So, are you still wondering if you should be resentful?"

"No."

"Are you angry or having a bad day? Are you still upset about anything at all?" she asks as she kisses him lightly on the neck.

"No. Everything seems just about perfect." He holds her close and kisses her back. "You are pretty good at this. I'm glad you helped me sort this out."

"Yes. Debate class is really paying off. That and I'm just awesome."

"And modest," he chuckles.

"And beautiful."

"No argument from me."

"And I can't have a good make-out session with my boyfriend when he's all brooding and mopey." He perks up considerably and hurries to take care of that problem immediately. "And… OH!"

"What!" He sits them up quickly, thinking that he's done something wrong.

"I just thought of another point!"

He groans and falls back to the rooftop, full of disappointment.

"What are your chores? You and Jazz?"

"Umm. Jazz gets the upstairs. Light cleaning and she cooks when mom can't. She makes sure the mail gets picked up and that the bills get to mom to be paid instead of having blueprints and such get drawn on them."

"Uh-huh. And..."

"And I do yard work and take out the trash and clean up the lab."

"The lab full of hazardous ectoplasm, chemicals, machinery, and the remains of various explosions?"

"Sam, you've been in the lab a million times. You know what's down there."

"Remember what I said about using your smarts, Danny. The lab full of dangerous things, that you are responsible for taking care of, that your parents might have wanted to protect you from, so they…"

"… so they made sure I had a hazmat jumpsuit."

"Probably. Although we can't be absolutely sure unless we ask them."

"Stop it."

"Fine. But you know I'm right. And I'm glad you have that jumpsuit, no matter _what_ you might think about it."

"Why?"

"Because you look totally hot in it."

He smiles and pulls her close, phasing through the rooftop and down into his room where he can carry on with their delayed make-out properly.

* * *

A/N, personal challenge: All action in third person, present tense because I hate it and thus need to work on it some more. No use of names unless it's in speech.


End file.
